Freedom and Educational Structures

Chapter 5

Freedom 

For my reaction to this chapter I am going to explicitly discuss Mass Customized Learning and reflect on an essay by Jordan Shapiro that was recently published in Forbes magazine (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2016/01/30/weve-had-100-years-of-progressive-education-and-the-worlds-getting-worse/#54bb93945cb7) as well as John Dewey. In chapter 5, Dewey discusses two kinds of freedom: physical freedom and intellectual freedom.  Dewey strives for a school system where students have significantly more physical freedom from which he believes intellectual freedom emerges.  For example, students silently sitting in rows awaiting the word from the all knowing teacher hinders the process intellectual freedom of students because the structure of compliance impedes intellectual freedom . In other words, the learning process must have as its basis a level of physical freedom.

Meanwhile, Shapiro argues for a new “normalization” in school structures.  Specifically, he states, “What we need instead is a new kind of normalization—new classroom rules, new district wide administrative systems, new school designs and new educational customs that will break the cycle of winners and losers, haves and have nots, believers and heathens.”  At the heart of Shapiro’s criticism of the current education system is that it glorifies (one may argue sanctifies) the fact that there are winners and losers in society.  Schools “normalize” students into the belief that efficiency and productivity are equated with high morality and those that accumulate more have more value. These are the “normalized” (almost hidden) structures of schools.  In effect, the structures become more important to individuals and society than the skills that are being taught to our children.

How does an MCL structure differ from the current structure of schooling? 

Does it allow for physical freedom of the students?  Yes. 

Does it allow for the intellectual freedom of students? Maybe. 

Does it fundamentally change the “normalized” structures of learning?  I think we really have to reflect on this question. 

If it is worthwhile to create a system where the common good is as important as climbing your personal Mount Everest, then we must grapple with what MCL actually changes.  The benefit of an MCL structure is that, foundationally, it is not about tinkering on the edges of learning.  Rather, it is about changing structures of learning.  The problem, as I see it, is that all of us involved in the designing of the MCL experience are subconsciously enmeshed in the current system.  Our professional default mode is away from freedom (both physically and intellectually) and toward traditional, normalized structures.  I see this as we are creating our new learning ecosystem at IU8.  We have spent the better part of a year grappling with how to change the structure of learning. We have spent a lot of time discussing the importance (or lack thereof) of curriculum.  Should we concentrate on “21^st Century skills”, or are these skills just window dressing to what is really important in schools?  In my mind, I am not interested in curriculum because I believe that any skill transfer to students is only tangential to the actual power of creating a meaningful learning experience.  In these learning experiences we can change the normalized structures of schooling and move away from the hyper individualized culture of the current school system.  Ultimately, I believe we can, and will, create a system that changes the structure of school.  However, it will take diligence on our part not to slip back into our default mode of education.

Duff's reaction to Chapter 4 of Experience and Education

Dewey - Chapter 4 Social Control

Duff

A football field is 120 yards long and 53.33 yards wide.  The white lines on the perimeter control the game, you cannot play outside the lines.  The lines insure a fair and reasonable outcome.  You see football, like education is a game of rules.  Football, like education is a game of organized chaos played within the boundaries, within the rules.  The question Dewey addresses is not a need to dismantle rather it is a question of who is in control.  It is a question of how much freedom to innovate, to create should exist within the boundary.  

In football you have players (the learners), those pesky people who succeed or fail.  Players have little control over the game until the whistle blows.  Teachers, coaches (learning facilitators) are juxtaposed in their role.  The coaches have great influence until the whistle blows.  One question is;  ‘Once the door to the classroom closes and the learning begins who is or should be in control of the experience’.  Should there even be a classroom?  How would we play the game without boundaries insuring success for every child? 

On a football team offensive lineman are often the most intelligent, most creative and most deviant players on the field.  They are our children, our learners.  

Each week after the chaos ends a lineman is judged, rated based upon how he performed on every play.  His performance is measured; it is closely monitored.  The more successful he is the less control.  He is given freedom to innovate in his upcoming experience, the next game.  The weaker the learner's performance the more restraint he is under.  Experience builds upon experience as the lineman grows and performs. But, there is social control.

The coach is the gatekeeper of control, the teacher (the learning facilitator). The coach grades performance and decides upon the next experience.  It is his job to know his players.  He must know their personal needs, skill level, confidence, intelligence and motivation.  Thus data, a system of social control is critical to the coach putting the player in a position for success.  

A coach designs tasks, blocking assignments and suggests experiences that might lead to success in the next game.  But, when the whistle blows he is not on the field.  He guides but has little to no control.   

Success or failure, when the game begins is solely based upon preparation, the coach and players ability to link a continuity of experiences designed to hopefully guarantee success.   You cannot have a slow person blocking a fast person or a midget blocking a 300-pound defensive tackle.  Somehow adjustments, planning and preparation must be aligned to insure a positive outcome before the whistle blows. 

Linemen prepare, coaches coach and when the whistle blows the game is played in a box.  There is an anticipated outcome.  Habit, history, integrity and a referee influence the game.  There are rules that must be followed.  Progress must be measured and a score is kept.  Penalties are assessed.  All of this is designed to insure a reasonable end, to control the experience.  The referee’s job is to manage the chaos, to influence a fair outcome but not to dictate it.

In the end, the team that can link successful experience with successful experience wins.  Yet it must be realized that win or lose both teams learn, the players (leaners) learn, the coaches (learning facilitators / teachers) learn and referees (administrators) learn from the experience - good and bad.  The challenge, the gift is to build upon the learning. 

What does this football metaphor have to do with Dewey, Chapter 4 Social Control?  Dewey boils the question down to command and control.  Who or what is in charge of the system?  What does accountability look like?  What is the child’s (learners) role?  What is the government’s role?  What is the curriculum specialist’s role?  What is the teacher’s role?  How much social control does a learning facilitator (teacher / coach) need in framing experiences?  How much trust, freedom does the learning facilitator have? What is the end goal, how do you rate success and failure?  

The questions go on and on.  But, for the customizers, the freedom seekers, the progressives even Dewey believed there must be some form of social control, some system.  And for the traditionalists it is clear that the system we have does not suit Dewey’s idea of Experience and Education. The current state of affairs stifles learning; it does not build upon opportunity.  It is a system of command and control in the wrong place. 

How do you meld the two, progressive and traditionalist, striving to get past the either / or, to change thinking and in so doing develop the - And.   There in lies the challenge. 

Chapter 4 of Experience and Education

The latest entry discusses the importance of educators.

Chapter 4

Social Control

The title of this chapter is a little intimidating: Social Control.  Wow!  At first blush one may worry that Dewey is going to delve into the intricacies of schools as they relate to societal control.  Fortunately, this is not what Dewey discusses in this chapter.  This chapter places the educator (learning facilitator, teacher, etc..) at the forefront of education and says, “Go ahead, you are in charge, you change the course of learning”…or at least that is what I took away from the chapter!

Educators must expand their beliefs about their role in educating children. In the dominant, top-down bureaucratic world many educators believe that their planning for their work (whether it is the classroom teacher making their lesson plans, or the school administrator leading the organization) is foundationally based on two rules. These are the two rules in a  “Command and Control” educational world. The first rule is control.  Keep the classroom (or school) in “order” and keep the kids under control.  The second rule is (at all costs) present the information to the students that will be on the State mandated tests…period. The way in which this information is presented to the students can, theoretically, be in various forms from lecturing to engagement of the students.  Unfortunately, because of the first rule of “order”, a command and control view of curriculum and instruction dominates the education landscape and engagement is not the norm.  The responsibility to change these two rules of planning fall squarely on educators.

In my career I have conducted hundreds of meetings/workshops with teachers and administrators.  In the vast majority of these meetings I have experienced educators who are turning themselves inside out for their students and their schools.  The dedication and passion that I have seen is inspiring both personally and professionally.  I try to engage educators in the “why” of their practice.  Why are they in education?  Why is education important for their community and society?  These questions are important and we spend a lot of time talking about them.  I have discovered that educators are not conditioned to engage in conversations that ask these types of questions.  Rather, they are so used to being told what to do and when to do it that it takes work on my part to fight through the indoctrination of the “Command and Control” ethos that our educators have been exposed to in their careers. The educators work in an environment where social control is reflected in the norms of their professional life: teach your kids this way; lead your school that way; wait for the State to tell you what, how and when to teach.  This is the social control of the system and it is something that Dewey believes can be changed:

“The educator is responsible for a knowledge of individuals and for a knowledge of subject-matter that will enable activities to be selected which lend themselves to social organization, an organization in which all individuals have an opportunity to contribute something, and in which the activities in which all participate are the chief carrier of control.” (56)

Learning for our children is in a state of flux.  The options for students to engage in meaningful curricula and innovative instruction is a result of the technological revolution that we are experiencing.  As true as that statement is, if educators are not empowered or if they do not have the courage to recognize their complicity in accepting the social control of the system, then our education system will not reach its potential. Educators can create learning experiences that transcend the social control of the system. By doing so, educators will create the conditions of freedom in their schools and classrooms…but it will require a different mindset.  Educators will have to “see” that there are conditions within the system in which they operate that indoctrinate control. By placing the student and the learning experience at the center of everything that we do in education then the rules of “Command and Control” will dissipate. If educators choose to take responsibility for changing this dynamic (and I believe most will) they can plan differently and introduce freedom in learning opportunities into their schools which will create outstanding learning experiences.

Duff's take on Chapter 3

Duff Rearick has written a great response to Chapter 3 of Dewey's Experience and Education.  He incorporates the importance of critical thinking in creating experiences for children.

Dewey Chapter 3 - The Criteria of Experience

Duff

January 12, 2016

“Is this decision, this activity about learning or control?”

               In the dark ages, in 1983 a young school administrator was hand picked by his district to cross the nation in search of the key to critical thinking.  How to teach children to think critically was at the time all the rage. Needless to say this was a heady time for a 33-year old assistant principal.

               You might think his selection stemmed from remarkable intellectual prowess.  You would be wrong.  He was chosen because no one else wanted the job.

               The young man flew about thinking he was important.  His journey took him from Los Angeles, to Dallas and other exotic sites finally ending in Washington DC.  He sought the Holy Grail of learning in 1983, critical thinking.  The answers proved elusive.

               By the time he arrived in Washington DC exhaustion had set in, his wife was tired of keeping the home fire burning and frankly he had stopped thinking.  At this last stop the young man sat in the back row of another hotel conference center.  He found himself beside a crusty old educator.  As the speaker waxed eloquently about some book or other he or she had written on critical thinking the old gentleman leaned over and whispered words that guided the rest of the young man’s career. 

“It is not the system or that kids cannot think, that is ridiculous. All kids can think critically, the problem is what we are asking them to think about.”

               After dropping this pearl of wisdom the old codger left never to be seen again. His message stuck, ‘What are we asking people to think about?’

               Fast forward to 2009.  The young man is now 59 years old and still searching for the Holy Grail.  Six fourth grade children, each 9 or so years old, are proceeding to dis-mantle an educational program.  They are bored.  Some are what we might label as gifted others not so much, each comes with different backgrounds and experiences.  The school tries an experiment.  The educators ask a groundbreaking question, ‘What are we asking these kids to do, to think about?’ 

               After much discussion and consternation the school decides to experiment.  The learners (aka children) are challenged with a new experience.  As a team they are assigned a project.  It is a difficult task that builds upon past experiences leading to new experiences. 

The young leaners are asked to build a hovercraft.  A parent (aka learning facilitator) volunteers to supervise but is restricted to safety, to insure no fingers are lost.  The children are given $100 and several weeks to complete the experience.  Outcome accountability is clear and simple, the craft must fly; it must fly with one child securely seated on it while flying; it must turn in four directions while flying; it must show emotion while flying.  Each volunteer must write a journal for review on the process.  In a few weeks this precocious group combines their experiences, builds upon past experiences and completes the task. The team demonstrates the outcome in front of peers and parents.  They meet all the criteria --- it flies!

               Bing the old codger now I was reminded that the problem is not with the children, it is not with the system, rather it is about risk and what we are asking teachers and children to think about.  This all leads back to John Dewey, Experience and Education, Chapter 3: Criteria of Experience and a series ideas we might consider.

               First, learning is a habit, school systems are built on habits indeed we live by habit.  You cannot change or transform habits by force.  We are too resilient.  To transform a habit we must alter the experience, thinking in such as a way as to cause the learner to choose to change.  This requires logical experiences building upon experiences and a lot of time. To be logical the experiences must have direction, a destination.

               Dewey believes in experiences building on experience.  He does not believe in random outcomes.

These experiences are guided by educators, teachers, (aka learning facilitators).  The experiences only make sense if there is an end goal a destination.  This said Dewey might suggest that we need to consider what the learners are thinking about, the experience as it relates to where the learning is taking the person.

Unfortunately as proven by our six nine year olds we underestimate the capacity of adults and children to think, to build experience upon experience.  If you look at our team they are given a defined destination, asked to blend their individual talents and experiences and a learning facilitator who just happened to be a parent.

The old codger’s comment and the nine-year-old experience are guides to the criteria of experience.  It all comes down to what we are asking adults and children to experience, to think about in a framework of increasing freedom, trust and choice.

But, this thinking is hard work at every level.  Henry Ford is purported to have said,  “Thinking is hard work that is why so few people do it.”  When you move down the path to which Dewey alludes; you must think with the end in mind, from that you find the criteria of experience.

In spite of the missed seat time, absence from critical instruction all of our nine children did well on their state exams, indeed one individual scored 100% in language arts and 99% in math.  I guess he did not miss too much when asked to think about something different.

Education and Experience Chapter 3

I struggled putting into words what I felt the significance of this chapter was on the future of education.  Although it is interesting that this book still holds relevance to education 78 years after it was first published.  That in and of itself probably says something about our education system...

Chapter 3

Criteria of Experience

As we construct the new learning ecosystem (based on principles of Mass Customized Learning), the role of experience becomes a concept that we must address.  The new learning ecosystem (with the learner at the center) is really an “experience generator” for students.  The challenge is to assure that the experiences that are built have what Dewey calls “continuity”.  Continuity is simply the recognition that one experience builds toward another experience and that we cannot construct educational experiences that exists in “water tight” (Dewey’s term) compartments that are unrelated to each other.  The goal of multiple experiences is growth for the student.  The role of the teacher is to encourage experiences (and create experiences) for students that encourage growth in all areas of their development.  The new learning ecosystem will avoid the narrow definition of growth that is now dominating education; namely growth equated to better scores on standardized tests.  Growth will be equated with how experiences will lead to further growth for students in all areas of development.

Learning facilitators will be charged with creating learning experiences that encourage growth and this will be a change in role for them.  Learning facilitators will create experiences that recognize the physical and social importance of a learning experience (Dewey calls these objective factors).  Our history (and training) in education has been to concentrate on a very narrow sliver of the physical aspects of creating a learning experience.  Things like textbooks and classroom layout have dominated our thinking while social aspects have been largely ignored (especially how they relate to creating a continuity of learning experiences).

My last reaction to this chapter as it relates to what we are building within the MCL framework is that our traditional education system creates (or demands) learning experiences that are unrelated to each other.  We may tell students that they have to learn something (or take a class and “learn”) because “it is good for you” or that it will teach you “discipline” or that you will “use it later in life”.  This is intellectual dishonesty toward our learners and toward ourselves. Without anchoring the learning experience in the life of the student, the learning experience becomes an abstract concept with little or no meaning for the learner. Our new learning ecosystem will not have a learning experiences whose stated objective for learning is that “it is good for you”.